Ultrafine-grain Steels : Mechanical Behavior

In recent years, both the steelmaking industry and laboratories in different parts of the world, have shown an increasing interest in reaching an industrial-level production of ultrafine grained steels (also known as ultrafine ferrite), which have a grain size d lower than 5 µm, and enhanced mechanical resistance and fracture toughness. At room temperature, the capacity of the material to be deformed during bending or drawing operations (typical of requirements for automotive parts applications) depends on the interaction of a hard and a soft phase in the microstructure. On the other hand, at high temperatures, these steels may show superplastic behavior if deformed at a precise combination of temperature and strain rate.